Tours / DOMUS AUREA: Nerone's Villas

Built, buried and finally rediscovered, Made of Tuscany enters with you into Nerone's Domus Aurea: a splendid abode with a controversial story like the emperor who had it built.

"In the palace everything shone with the glitter of gold," said Seneca. The Domus Aurea (The Golden House), in fact, had in its interior 30,000 m2 of frescoes and stuccos decorated in gold that extended over more than 300 rooms.

Work began on a majestic home immediately after the "Great Fire of Rome" of 64 A.D. and was completed only four years later.

The palace, unfortunately, suffered the same sad fate as the emperor. In fact, when the Roman Senate condemned Nero to the punishment of the Damnatio memoriae, the measure that aimed to erase all traces of the emperors deemed unworthy, the Domus Aurea was progressively sacked, destroyed, burnt, and finally buried.

Nevertheless, the great engineering of the ancient Romans allowed the structure to resist until the present day and today, the restoration works are trying to make it shine again.

Visit with us the rooms that so far have been brought to light and admire the walls painted by the best artists of that time, which were almost 1,500 years later, the source of inspiration for some works by Donatello, Michelangelo and Pinturicchio.

Then a virtual reconstruction will show you the original layout of the Domus, while a guide will tell you about the events of that shining house and of that insane emperor- a lover of art that still divides the judgement of historians.